By The Way They Dance
by Malignant Era
Summary: Early in the morning: a brief KaiMai driblet. Rated for language and minor sexuality.


**Note: **titled after the Jump Little Children song, and written because each time I picture a KaiMai relationship, I imagine Kaiba coming to the reluctant realization he cares for her but being as private as he is, he doesn't see the reason in telling her when he doesn't necessarily need the reassurance of hearing how she feels. Mai, on the other hand, needs to feel she's wanted but can't seem to handle being _needed_ or letting him know that _he's_ needed, so a lot goes unsaid between them.

---

"It's four a.m."

Kaiba wasn't going to favor that with a response. He knew exactly what time it was. With the shades and curtains drawn on each window, his bedroom was a world blackness save for the glaring face of the alarm clock on the nightstand.

"_Four_," the voice beside him emphasized, quite obnoxiously. "In the morning."

_No_. Shit.

He grunted in protest when the blanket was tugged from his shoulders, exposing his naked back to the chilly air.

"Kaiba..."

He shifted against mattress in a futile search for what remained of warmth. Damn her and damn the air conditioner, too.

"I know you're awake." She ghosted one of those lacquered nails up his spine. "Rise and shine... _Buttercup_."

Buttercup? Yeah, as if he'd answer to that.

"You're shivering."

Bothersome woman.

"Poor dear."

Smug, cover-hogging bitch.

"If you roll over, I'll warm you up."

Tempting, but he wasn't going to play her game.

"Kaiba."

He could smother her with his pillow. No one would ever have to know.

"It's four-o-one a.m."

...for fuck's sake.

"So why are you still here, Kujaku?" he snarled at last, reaching back blindly and seizing a fistful of comforter. He managed to yank some of it away, all the while ignoring the throaty noise of triumph he heard over the rustle of abused fabric.

"For the sheets, I suppose," she mused, pedaling the heels of her feet against the silk in lazy motions. "Definitely the sheets. I can't get enough of them."

"Right." He rolled onto his back and turned his head to glare at her on reflex. "Then why did you find it crucial to wake me up?"

Like the vulture she was she wiggled closer to him, pressing her front to his side and propping her chin on his chest.

Her voice sounded syrupy when she asked "Don't you have to go to work?"

"Are you _cuddling_ with me?" He twitched in disgust, but he didn't shove her away.

She chuckled, walking two of her fingers down a meandering path over the sensitive flesh on his stomach. "A necessary evil," she purred, and pulled a smirk he couldn't see but heard as she added, upon reaching her target: "Or maybe not."

"An involuntary physical reaction," he hissed through his teeth. "Why are you still here, Kujaku?"

"Don't you have to go to work?"

He wet his lips. "Not until five." His breathing hitched when she squeezed him just right. "I could be sleeping right now."

"Sleeping?" She snorted. "You don't sleep. You die for a little while. Like a vampire-- a retarded vampire."

He sneered at the suggestion. "How's that?"

"You sleep like a dead man," she clarified, teeth grazing his nipple. "But you're not exactly nocturnal, are you."

"Hn." His hips moved to the slow rhythm of her hand, urging her faster with every pass; a request that she ignored. "Kujaku--" she bit him "--fuck!"

"You like to draw blood." She licked the angry mark she'd made. "But you don't drink it."

The heady sensation of frustration and arousal building in his veins, he tried to capture her lips when she pressed a kiss at the corner of his mouth but she moved too quickly. "Kujaku---"

Withdrawing her hand, much to his dismay, she patted his hip in a purely condescending manner. "Well? What're you waiting for?"

A good diversion. He certainly wasn't going to argue with her now.

He flipped the both of them, nudging himself between her thighs and pinning her wrists as he swooped down to steal the kiss that she'd denied him. His invasion, meanwhile, was swift and none to gentle, but barring the initial wince, she just mewled against his lips and raised her legs to further his access.

Her tongue on his tasted coppery. He retreated, smirking, and rejoined her. "Who's the vampire now?"

"I prefer the term succubus," she countered, and he sucked a sharp breath as she squeezed him just right, again.

"...nice."

---

When the alarm clock sounded, he was the first to stir, nipping the back of her shoulder to jostle her out of any post-coital bliss.

Because he could, and because turnabout was fair play after all.

"It's five a.m."

She grumbled something unintelligible.

"_Five_--" he emphasized "--in the morning."

She stretched under the blanket, sending him a deliberate kick to the shin. "Sorry, _Buttercup_," was the hoarse reply. "Four's for sex. Five's for sleeping."

As if that was all he had on his mind?

He patted her belly, just to make her self-conscious. "No. I'm going to work."

Reaching over her side, she felt for his ass and pinched it. "I am _more _than aware of that, thank you. Now shut that thing off and shut the hell up."

"Loathsome shrew." He disentangled from their embrace, from the comforter and from the twisted mess of sheets, and headed for the shower to wash her scum off his skin. While he didn't mind wearing her sweat, he drew the line at lipstick.

No more than fifteen minutes later he was out and dressed for work, donning the tie and toting the briefcase as he sidled over to the edge of the bed. She was, of course, precisely in the center of it, walled in by pillows, bundled up greedily with both his portion of the covers and hers, and lounging like a queen upon _his_ king-sized bed, as if he'd been an imposition there all along.

He cleared his throat, leaning over a fraction, and waited for her to open her eyes. When she did, he asked, as he did every morning: "Why are you still here, Kujaku?"

She answered with an exasperated look, as she did every morning, flinging her hair over her shoulder and turning her back on him to burrow deeper into the cavern of bedding.

"Don't you have to go to work?"


End file.
